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A brief history of time . . . . as an English teacher in Bangkok, 4 In Nov ‘99 I returned to college for the start of the new semester only to find that the number of classes per week had gone from 21 up to 28. In addition to this, as I would only be having one evening class in the coming semester - instead of two as I’d previously had, my salary would be about 10% lower every month. This didn’t seem terribly fair and so I decided to look for a new job. Before this I hadn’t thought about leaving but when schools start taking advantage of teachers it’s time to think about moving on. I told Penwaree about this and she understood the reasons why I wanted to leave - I wouldn’t have just walked out on her, she’s one of the most helpful and friendliest people I’ve met here. Just after I decided I’d leave if something better came along I got an email form my friend Tony who works at ********** ******* asking if I was interested in working there. To cut it short I was, I met the Head of English - Mr X., a very nice but extremely vague man. So vague that he never actually told me I’d got the job, despite the fact I was the only person he’d talked to about it. Tony tried to find out for me but the nearest he could get to a positive answer was that “I hadn’t not got the job”. ( Seems Mr X manages to get through life without ever actually saying YES or NO to anything, which while it makes him very easy to get along with, can also lead to some confusion about what, if anything, is happening and what, if anything, you’re supposed to be doing. ) So as I hadn’t heard anything to the contrary, I just assumed I’d got the job and turned up at the school on a Monday morning at the beginning of December. Jan ' 00 - Well so far so good with the new job. I teach boisterous Matayom 1 (Grade 7) students. There are about 65 in a class and I'm supposed to teach them conversation. HA !. What this boils down to is attempting to control them for 50 minutes and giving the intelligent ones the opportunity to speak. Most classes comprise 10 good students, 30 mediocre students and the remainder are buffaloes, who suffer from a combination of being too spoilt and too rich to give a toss about school work. I teach 20 x 50 minute periods a week, not too bad, and spend the rest of the time using the computer or drinking coffee and chatting to Alex, the 4 year M1 veteran. He's learnt how to block out the noise and ignore it - in the same way soldiers learn to block out cries of pain from fallen colleagues. One day I hope to acquire this skill. As of mid-January I still haven't done a full weeks work, there are always lessons being cancelled for one reason or another, not that I'm complaining. End of February = end of term. I've managed to extend my record of not having completed a single week without having one day's lessons cancelled. There was a close call in mid February when it seemed as though I'd have to teach the entire week but then, at 3 pm on Thursday afternoon I was informed that the school was closed the following day. This was apparently for the final day of the 'Unctad X' meeting in Bangkok, a UN junket. ( The government likes to declare public holidays whenever large numbers of foreign dignitaries descend on Bangkok, it reduces the amount of traffic on the roads and therefore makes Bangkok look prettier. ) We've got all March off but have to teach a summer course in April, exactly what and who I'm going to be teaching will made known to me at a later date - probably about 10 minutes after I walk into a classroom full of blank faces and wait for them to tell me what I’m supposed to be doing there. You’ll find that the students themselves are usually the best source for information about the daily running of the school and associated activities.
May '00. The summer course is over, the result was a draw. I had two classes 5 times a week, one of them was good, above average number of talkative, intelligent students and those who didn't want to work did their own thing quietly and didn't disrupt the more linguistically gifted in the class. However, the other class was the stuff nightmares are made of, Phil Spector had a 'Wall of Sound' - I had a wall of white noise. About 3 motivated students in a class of 46, for the rest of them I was on babysitting duty, making sure none of them sustained any serious injury during the class and at least looked like they were doing something constructive other than grabbing each others dicks, which seemed to be preferable to doing anything else - although I'd have thought the novelty would have worn off after the first few days - it didn't. Reports from other teachers indicate the coming term isn't going to be much fun. The worst behaved students ever seems to be the opinion of the new entrants this year. The new semester begins . . .
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Most of the cancellations were for cheering practice for a big inter school football tournament. Not only cheering but also holding up coloured cards to form mosaics.
Here you can see one of the 'funny' mosiacs made by a particular school. Apparently there's nothing wrong or objectionable with this. Wonder what the Israeli Ambassador makes of an upmarket Thai school doing this kind of thing.